When the Centauri emperor visits the station, Sheridan tries to keep G'Kar
from going after him. Londo and Refa plot to expand their power.
A mysterious man seeks out Garibaldi.
Turhan Bey as the Centauri Emperor.
Malachi Throne as the Centauri Prime Minister.
William Forward as Refa.

Sheridan joined the Earth military a few years before the
Earth-Minbari War. A planetary draft was established during the war.

The Centauri have sent many ships into Vorlon space; none have
returned, but strange stories about the Vorlons have found their
way back to the Centauri homeworld.

Sinclair's duties on the Minbari homeworld extend far beyond normal
ambassadorial functions. He is taking part in the preparation for
the fight against the great darkness that many of the Minbari
believe is approaching. To that end, he is in command of a small
army of "rangers" -- individuals, Minbari and human, who roam the
frontier, gathering information too sensitive to report back via
normal channels.

The Centauri Emperor employs four telepaths, linked since birth;
when he leaves the royal court, two accompany him and two stay
behind, so he and his representatives at the court are constantly
aware of each other's circumstances.

Why is Sinclair in charge of the rangers? Is he the only one in
control, or is he a piece of a much larger chain of command?

How did the rangers get started? How are they expanding? What
or who is drawing them to Minbar, and how?

Why does Sinclair think Garibaldi should stay close to the Vorlon?
How much does he know, and how long has he known it? (Recall that in
"The Gathering"
Delenn gave Sinclair information about the Vorlons, though it's not
clear how complete or accurate it was.)

Will Londo become emperor some day?

What will the Narn's first move against the Centauri be?

What did the Emperor know about Vorlons that caused him to want to
ask Kosh his question? What does the question mean? (see
Analysis)

When the two telepaths on Centauri Prime entered the throne room,
a human and two Minbari were talking to the prime minister. Most
likely they were there on unrelated business, but it's possible they
were rangers, there to gather information. (See
jms speaks)

As soon as Londo lied about what the Emperor told him, the two
veiled telepaths exchanged a look and left the room hastily. It
may be that they knew he was lying; whether they'll tell anyone,
and if so what impact that will have, remains to be seen.

Kosh seems to have a perception that extends into the future; or
perhaps he is simply basing his comment on the results of the last
great war against the Shadows.

The hand seems a clear reference to the "great hand, reaching
out across the stars" as seen by Elric in
"The Geometry of Shadows."
If so, the hand is Londo's. Presumably it is a metaphor
for his expanding power and influence.

Londo stands in the middle of fine sand, a desert (or
perhaps decimated ruins; witness the dead vegitation and
patterns in the sand) and watches several Shadow ships fly
overhead. This appears to be on Centauri Prime. He is
dressed in his ambassadorial uniform and appears to be
roughly the same age as in the present. One implication is
that the Shadows will either attack Centauri Prime or (more
likely) come to its defense. It should also be noted that
Londo has never seen a Shadow ship in the present.
One reader suggests that Londo's expression can be interpreted
as Londo looking on, helpless, as a great evil is done; for
the first time realizing who's really the pawn in his
relationship with the Shadows.

When Londo receives the crown, he is again not much older
than in the present, possibly slightly older than when he's
observing the Shadow ships. Perhaps he is crowned after
calling in the Shadows to help defend Centauri Prime. (Of
course, the new Emperor would have to be dead first.)
The person crowning him appears to be fairly old.

Much later -- twenty years, give or take -- Londo, in white
Imperial attire, sits in the throne and looks around,
face filled with regret or resignation. Nobody else is
visible, and the throne room seems bare compared to the
scene at the beginning of the episode. It's as if everything
has been lost; he is Emperor, but Emperor of nothing, perhaps
of a dead world.

Then he sees G'Kar, also aged 20 years, face half-covered
by a strip of black cloth. The two try to strangle each other.
Londo appears to go limp as the dream ends; presumably he is
dying. The cloth across G'Kar's face appears to cover an
injury; he may be missing his left eye.

Londo's old age in the last scene suggests that it takes place around
the same time as the attempt to snatch Babylon 4 through time (cf.
"Babylon Squared.")
Sinclair seemed to have aged about the same amount, though of course
humans and Centauri may age at different rates, and something may have
caused Sinclair to age prematurely. But barring those two factors, it
suggests that the war is still raging at the time of Londo's
strangulation, and that it will last at least twenty years.

It's also worth noting that the dream contained only one spoken line,
from
"Chrysalis:"
"Keep this up, G'Kar, and soon you won't have a planet to protect."
(It was spoken over a scene from
"Midnight on the Firing Line.")

Londo may well be serious when he tells Vir he has no wish to become
emperor; his premonition may have convinced him that it'd be bad
to seek the position. But the vision remains; he may find himself
taking the throne in spite of himself down the road.

The state of G'Kar's left eye may be a reference to Norse
mythology, in which the god Odin gives up his left eye for wisdom.

"It's a small price to pay for immortality," says Refa. A reference
to everlasting fame? The Centauri propensity for elevating emperors
to godhood? (cf.
"Chrysalis")

The emperor's question implies that he was
in on something that isn't general knowledge, possibly something about
the Vorlons. One explanation may lie in dreams; perhaps the emperor's
death dream (according to Londo in
"Midnight on the Firing Line,"
such dreams are commonplace among the Centauri) told him that a war
would begin after his death. Why he thought Kosh would know how the
war would end -- assuming the war is what the question referred to --
is still an open question, though. (See
jms speaks)

Along similar lines, why did the emperor speak his dying words to
Londo, rather than Refa? Did he know what Londo was really up to,
or was he simply guessing that Londo was likely the catalyst who
would bring his empire into war, based on Londo's handling of Quadrant
37 in
"Chrysalis?"

The Narn government apparently approved of G'Kar's would-be
assassination attempt, even though he lied about it in his will;
presumably he wanted to protect his people from revenge attacks
by the Centauri.

I love "The Coming of Shadows." It's one of those episodes that just
knocks the breath out of you. You know those moments when you're in the
passenger seat of a car, and the person driving is doing something
crazy, and your foot automatically keeps searching for a brake pedal
that isn't there because you know something awful's going to happen?
That's the feeling you get all through that script. This episode,
like "Sky," "Signs," "Chrysalis" and "Revelations" again changes the
direction and ratchets everything one notch tighter. It's also a
very visual script, and I like that, since I sometimes do rely too
much on dialogue from time to time, and it's good to go in a different
direction.

Kosh's brevity is one of the things I like best about him; in the
year two episode "The Coming of Shadows," he has just two words in the
whole episode...but they're guaranteed to give just about anyone the
willies.

The G'Kar-Emperor thread was similar to the King
Arthur legend: Arthur's and Mordred's armies are poised for battle but
make one last attempt to negotiate, but a soldier raises his sword to
kill a snake and everyone attacks.
There's another applicable metaphor for the sword story; you'll see it
a little later this season. Very good catch, btw. "This season"
refers to season three.

I generally don't let the actors know what's coming unless it's
important to the current performance. Otherwise you risk having the
actor play the *result* instead of the *process*. Had to make one
divergence from this recently, so that Peter could understand better
a sequence in "The Coming of Shadows," which you'll understand when
you see it.

We're also taking advantage of some of the recent Hubble photographs
to scan them and use them as backgrounds in some far-space shots;
there's one in "The Coming of Shadows," for instance. Real space is
*very* nice looking in places.

I may not have been clear in my meaning when I said "accellerating
the arc." This doesn't mean doing anything ahead of schedule; it just
means that now we begin cranking the story into a higher intensity
level. We've been kind of floating toward our destination...now we
begin the process of accellerating. If you recall Literary Structure
from English Lit 101, there's the Introduction, the Rising Action, the
Complication, the Climax, and the Denouement. Year one up through
about the first eight episodes of year two are Introduction; we are now
in Rising Action stage. Remember that this is structured like a novel,
and you'll generally have some idea of where you stand in the
progression.

I ended up giving Peter info on "Signs" prior to shooting "Chrysalis"
last season; that was the biggie there. For "CoS" in order for the
scene to match what's going to happen several years down the road in
the series, I had to kinda give him the context of the dream, and what
was really happening in that scene, and what caused it, and how he got
to that place with G'Kar's hands around his throat.

He seemed quite...astonished.

Yeah, on several levels, writing "The Coming of Shadows" was hard;
there were times I felt as though I'd just jumped onto the back of a
runaway dynamite truck. Halfway through that story you can feel the arc
kinda moving underneath you, like some huge, dark fish about to break
surface.

The only way to make a viewer feel a character's pain is if you feel
it in the writing, and a lot of that came through. I live with these
characters running around in my head 24 hours a day...and when I'd
finally finished "Shadows," it was as if they all sorta stopped and
looked at each other, and at me, and said, "Gee, thank you EVER so
fucking much, jeezus, why don't you just go pluck somebody's eye out
while you're at it?"

To which the only reply is, "Now that you mention it...."

The script for this episode is in JMS' "Complete Book
of Scriptwriting."
What might be interesting, next time you pick up the book, is to
fire up a copy of "The Coming of Shadows" and go through it with the
script in hand...it's a good way of seeing how you lay out a show
shot-for-shot. And since there's stuff there that was cut from the
episode, you can also judge on what was left out, and why, and whether
it hurt or helped.

Not all Centauri dreams come true; however, the ones in which they
see their deaths tend to be pretty accurate.

Turhan originally came in to audition for Elric in "Geometry;" we
wanted someone with more menace (Ansara), but we were all just blown
away by how wonderful and sweet and nice a person he was, and as he
left, I told John Copeland, "I'm gonna write a part just for him."

So I did, and we cast him, and everyone on the set loved him...to
the point that, at the end of the shoot, they were saying, "You BASTARD,
how could you bring this WONDERFUL man in here and then KILL HIM OFF SO
WE CAN'T HAVE HIM BACK?!"

Are the Rangers a reference to the Chuck Norris series, "Walker,
Texas Ranger," with which you were involved, or to the Rangers in
Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings?"
For me, the concept of the Rangers isn't tied to Norris; that isn't
the reference I was talking about. Being on that show, I kinda had to
look into the history of the Texas rangers in general, and being the
curious kind of guy I am, I widened out into the Army Rangers, and other
sorts. I'd been looking for a kind of name to attach to this group, and
the more I thought about it, the more it fit.

As far as the costume is concerned...it's not medeival based; if you
look at the ranger's outfit, than go look at a Minbari warrior outfit,
you will discover a LOT of points of comparison. It was *designed* to
echo Minbari warrior caste clothes, to reflect the fact that these two
sides are working together. Go fire up "Legacies" and look at his
uniform, then look at the ranger. You'll see the similarities in
silhouette and line in various places.

Of course I've read and enjoyed Tolkein. But as I've said, I have
no interest in doing LoTR with the serial numbers filed off. I've
dropped references to it in dialogue, but the structure of the story has
nothing whatsoever to do with LoTR. Basically, a lot of people have
come up and said, "Oh, this is the same as Foundation," or "This is
the same as LoTR," or "This echoes a lot of Dune," or "This is
obviously a Homeric tale," or "There's a lot of Star Wars here." It
uses the same tools as all mythic structure fiction uses. Hence it
resonates. But I didn't sit there and think, "Hmm...Gandalf left, so
I'll have Sinclair leave." That's just plain silly.

It's really a matter of what you bring to the table, that affects
what you see in the story.

The roots of the symbolism and structure of B5 go back a hell of a
lot longer than this. Here...I'll give you one free.

G'Kar is in many ways my Cassandra figure, who in the Greek tales
was granted the gift of prophecy...all the disasterous things she
predicted would come true...but she was cursed by the gods that NO ONE
would ever believe her. And later, when the war was at its height,
she ended up in the service of.....

One could certainly argue the position that those who become Rangers
are drawn to Minbar for that purpose, and speculate about what might be
propelling that.

The broach worn by the Rangers was designed by me and Ann Bruice,
our costumer. I sketched (dopily and badly) what I had in mind, which
was a stylized human and minbari on either side of a gemstone, both
wokred (worked) into the same metal, and holding the gemstone.

She then took this drawing that looked like it had been drawn by a
drunk five year old and translated it into a striking piece.

The Rangers actually owe more to the Lone Ranger and the Texas Rangers
in general.

FYI, Sinclair called Delenn "old friend" as far back as the 2-hour
pilot.

Londo, in his vision, sees the shadow vessels, but he does not know
(in his present tense version) that that's what they are. He's had this
particular dream for years now, long before meeting Morden.

Re: your question...at this juncture, I think I'd have to choose "The
Coming of Shadows" as the one episode I'd use to represent the series.
That one episode came out so close to perfect, so close to what I saw in
my head when I wrote it, that the difference is no difference at all.
It has all the elements I'd feature in a B5 discussion...the CGI, the
characterization, the complexity, the politics, the language, the
performances.

The handclasp used in "Coming of Shadows" was a traditional clasp
used by Romans, usually in order to check if the other person was
carrying a knife.

Because to some extent the roman civilization is one of the sources
for constructing the Centauri, I adapted their handshake (checking
for knives) as their greeting; "I offer the hands of friendship."

There's a difference between what I believe dreams mean, what the
Centauri believe dreams mean, and what dreams mean to the Centauri,
in that universe, and what they mean to me in our universe.

I suspect the truth lay somewhere between Shroedinger and Jung.

Thanks. That scene [the attack on the Narn outpost] in "Coming of
Shadows" is one of my favorites; it does, as you say, convey that
sense of wonder which is one of my main goals with this show.

Re: parallel visuals between MotFL and CoS...yes, precisely. In some
ways, they were set up as mirror-image parallels of one another, to
show how the wheel turns, to quote G'Kar. The opening council
meeting, the attacks, the determination to kill the other, alternately
Garibaldi or Sheridan having to stop them by calling on the question
of consequences if followed up on...it shows CoS as sort of the "dark
mirror" of the first episode. Everything we saw when we first thought
we knew what the series was has now totally reversed and been turned
on its head.

They also focus on one of the main questions that B5 addreses itself
to: what is important to you? what are you willing to sacrifice? how
far are you willing to go to get what you want? For me, a large
measure of defining WHO we are is by WHAT we are willing to do, and
what we want, and the means by which we pursue those goals. The other
theme of course is sacrifice, which recurs throughout the show in one
form or another.

Sometimes, I think, people get so caught up in what's happening and
why that they miss what it's *about* on a more cellular level. And
that's the question of who we are. Identity. The importance of *one
single person* and the ability of that person to act as a fulcrum,
intentionally or otherwise, upon which vast events can turn. Choices.
What you value most. Those, to me, are the issues most worth
exploring. We're told every day, beaten down with the notion that
we're powerless, that we can't change things, you can't fight city
hall...and of course it's not true. You can fight. And sometimes,
you can even win.

Sinclair didn't send the same letter. Same greeting, to keep the
recipient secret.

Only the Ranger knew who got what.

The emperor falling scene, as with those around it, were shot as
written, down to the slow-motion notation, the close on his head
hitting the floor, the women clutching one another...all in the
script. But it takes someone as skilled as Janet to take what
somebody else might screw up and elevate it into something truly
nifty.

Slow-motion (or camera overcranked) is almost always indicated in
scripts. I like slow-mo. It can add a dreamlike quality to a shot, and
prolong a sense of imminent trouble.

You left out my favorite quote from the show, from the Emperor: "The
past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us
...and our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast,
terrible in-between."

The centauri veiled telepaths are mainly wired into one another.

I'd say that Turhan was probably emperor for about 30
years or so.

The emperor said exactly what, in the hallway, Londo said he said.

The emperor was referring to Londo and Refa. And if the Centauri
telepaths suspected or picked up anything, to tell anyone would almost
certainly lead to a quick demise. When you're that high up in the royal
court, you learn to keep your mouth shut.

[Emperor] Turhan's death was exactly as stated, natural causes. If
it were anything else, we'd have at least nodded in that direction at
some point. It's not fair to do so otherwise.

Didn't the Narn behind Londo and Refa hear them?
The Narn was just passing quickly through scene, in a hurry, and
couldn't have heard what Londo and Refa were quietly discussing.

Your feelings about the war starting are exactly what they should be,
and what I wanted to achieve with "Shadows." In SF TV, very often, as
you state, it's "Yeah, let's get a war on! Blow stuff up!" But to
hear of a *real* war...it's very, very sobering. When we hear that
Gulf troops were being sent into the Mideast, when we heard of soviet
troops sent into Prague...your heart stops for a moment. When Kennedy
put American ships in a Cuban blockade and the world held its breath
...THAT is what it feels like to step into possible or real war. All
you can think of is, "How the HELL did we get into this, and how the
hell do we get OUT of it?" And that was at the emotional core of
"Shadows."

Why not use the healing device from "Quality of Mercy?"
The alien healing device was specifically used in treatment of
illness; the Emperor suffered massive damage to his heart and othe
internal organs, which simply restoring some life energy wouldn't help.

Not a contradiction. I don't believe in omniscient or all powerful
devices that function like literal deus ex machinas and heal everybody
all the time. It was stated *plainly and clearly* that the device was
used in healing terminally ill patients. They cannot undo physical
damage from gunshots (the regen packs and other devices were used to
heal Garibaldi's wound, and the alien device was used to raise his life
energy level enough to bring him out of the coma). The emperor
suffered a massive attack that destroyed parts of his heart. Can't be
fixed by this device.

You may tell your friend that the city hit in "CoS" was CGI, not
a model.

The Sanctuary is where Sheridan and the Emperor had their lengthy
conversation; it's *all* a virtual set except the floor.

The Sanctuary is entirely a virtual set. It's all blue-screen, no
walls, no windows, no stars, no nothing. I made sure to ask
Foundation and Mitch to blur the walls a bit in close up to give it
the correct depth of field. (Much of the CGI/background work is done
by Mitch, our effects guy, who works independent of Foundation, who
was also the main EFX guy on Predator, ET and others.) Because that
was a LONG scene, the rendering time was just hideous.

The Sanctuary set has ALWAYS been entirely virtual, except for a small
grating on the floor as a marker. The walls, the windows, all of it.
Virtual. We've actually done this a number of times. I haven't said
anything before because whenever I mention there's a virtual set, and
where it is, people look at it and say, "Oh, yeah, I could tell it was
virtual." Because they knew ahead of time. So I stopped mentioning it.

We're sneaky that way. You've seen, and will continue to see, sets
that don't exist ANYwhere. Hell, you know that bazaar shot in the
main title sequence? The second floor? Doesn't exist. Digital
compositing and virtual set melding.

The area where the reception was being held is the Rotunda.

On the chance that the datacrystal might fall into the wrong hands, I
had Sinclair deliberately avoid using Garibaldi's last name, and
avoid Delenn's altogether (since she has only the one). The Ranger
was told to deliver the crystals at the cost of his own life if
necessary...but sometimes such orders don't end well for the messenger.
So both messages began the same way.

I'm very happy at the reaction. I was telling John Copeland a bit
ago, when we finished the episode, "Maybe we ought to superimpose a
crawl before the first frame of the teaser saying, "JUST IN CASE YOU
THOUGHT WE WERE KIDDING.""

An aside on the jms/kosh discussion, for whatever interest it may
have....when Ardwight comes in to do Kosh, they call me in to direct
his performance so that it matches what the intent is now, and how it
will be interpreted later. From where I sit in the control room, I
can't see him, I can only hear his voice. So it's kinda like talking
with Kosh there, and me saying, "Okay, can you try 'In Fire' hitting
the second word harder, and with a sense of some anger behind it?"
And between takes, he's still in Kosh-speak mode, muttering, "How will
this end, how do I know talk to my agent...go on, get out, buzz off
...."

There are some episodes coming that are about as intense as this,
though not as much *happens*, in the sense of a bunch of events
affecting lots of people in different places.

Yes, intentional parallel structure to "Midnight," which is why I
included the shot from that episode in Londo's dream. I like irony.

Yes, "CoS" is a deliberate mirror-image of "Midnight," partly to
illustrate the notion that "the wheel turns," as G'Kar says...yes, it
does, and if you forget that it eventually turns on *you*, you'll be
ground beneath it.

I will tell you a true and secret thing, re: Londo's dream, and looking
up into a blue sky to see the ships passing overhead.

Ever since I was a kid, I've had that image in my dreams, of standing
out in the open and looking up as strange dark ships pass overhead.
It's always been an unnerving image, and I really wanted to use it
here to see if it would have the same effect on others.

The other single most recurring image is to be standing at the bottom
of a long set of stairs, in a basement, and the door at the top of the
stairs is thrown open, and there's gunfire, and guards, and flares in
the night beyond, and more ships firing down.

Don't be surprised if this shows up as well, someday....

We nailed a piece with Michael before he left for New York; when we
shot "Points," he had long since returned to NY and was in the
process of pursuing other things.

One of the problems we had with the Hugo last year was
that whereas only a couple of TNG episodes were good enough to get
nominated, eight B5 episodes made it to the final cut. Because folks
went for their favorite episodes, and they had a number that year.
The result was that the choices got split so much that TNG won, since
it had fewer good or great episodes that season. ("All Good Things"
won with, I think, 57 votes; the top two B5 episodes on the list had
32 and 27 votes between them, enough right there to have won if
combined. That was for "Signs and Portents" and "Chrysalis," with
"And the Sky Full of Stars" at 21, "Babylon Squared" at 19,
"Believers" at 10, "Mind War" at 9, "Voice in the Wilderness" at 8,
and "Soul Hunter" at 6.)

So basically, we lost because we had too many solid episodes to choose
from.

As a result, a lot of folks this year have been campaigning to have
participants go for "The Coming of Shadows," which is the highest
rated episode in all the informal polls on-line and elsewhere from
that time period. It's the one nearly everybody seems to agree upon.

Congratulations on winning the Hugo.
Thanks; that was the one where we felt we really hit our stride.

The Hugo is a marvelous reward to everyone who's worked
so hard on the show these last 3+ years. We're very proud.

Did you think you were going to win?
I honestly didn't know how it was going to work out. I figured
(correctly, as it turned out) that the main opposition would be Apollo
13. Which for my money would've been a good selection. (Is it SF? The
description John Campbell and, I think, Heinlein gave for SF is "the
impact on humans of technology." It even uses the Analog Magazine
approach of finding a technical solution to a technical problem. If
Apollo 13 doesn't count that way, what does? Is it fiction? Nnnnnooo,
I suppose, though certainly elements of it were fictionalized for
purposes of drama, and I guess that counts somewhat.)

Anyway, that dispute aside, and I can see why it's not a clear issues
for a lot of folks...understand that I've never won a major award
before. I've been up for Ace Awards, the Writers Guild Award, the
Gemini Award (the Canadian equivilant of an Emmy), the HWA Bram Stoker
Award, others...but hadn't won, and as a result, you get very guarded
about these things. So I didn't know for sure until the words left
Roger Corman's lips.

And I have to say...this show has won a lot of awards in different
areas, Emmys and others, but this one, for me, means the most. Even
Warners is excited about it, and is taking out a double-page ad in most
of the trades this Friday, with others to appear the following week.
(We encouraged them to also congratulate the nominees for the award as
well, since they were all very deserving, it was stiff competition.)

The reaction at the [WorldCon] to B5, at the awards
and elsewhere, was quite amazing. Everywhere the show was mentioned at
panels, it appaarently got applause. The attending fans were
*extremely* friendly, went out of their way to be nice. The two B5
panels I gave (the second one added on when the first one wouldn't fit
into the room provided) were extremely enthusiastic. I think the two
presentations I gave that day totaled about 2,500-2,600 people total.

When the winner was announced for Best Dramatic Presentation, and I
headed for the stage, for a moment I thought we were having an
earthquake, or there was a sudden thunder...but it was the fans
applauding and stomping their feet enough to make the ground shake. It
was deafening down where the nominees were, and I noticed a couple of
them looking around with a "what the hell is THAT?" look on their faces.

Reader congratulates JMS on the Hugo and adds that
she did so in person, but he didn't seem to hear her then.
Thanks...I'm not sure I heard much of anything that night....

See the Notes section for the
vote tallies.
What's interesting, in noting the number of votes in the nominations, is
that if we hadn't withdrawn the second Hugo nominated B5 episode, "The
Fall of Night," DS9 wouldn't have had a nomination at all. They moved
into the nominations when we withdrew "FoN."

How many nominations did "The Fall of Night"
receive?
I don't know offhand; my guess is that it was #5 in the overall
nominations list, because (I understand) they had to jump past #6 (The
Long, Twilight Struggle) to get to #7 (the DS9 episode) to find a non-B5
candidate for the nominations list. So we had 3 out of the top 6, and
apparently two more B5 episodes were high up on the list, I think in the
top 10.

Is this the first TV episode to win since Harlan
Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" from the original Star
Trek?
Actually, no, two episodes of TNG also got Hugos.

But what *is* significant here is that in 43 years, only 7 Hugos have
gone to dramatic TV series; 3 to the original Twilight Zone, 4 to Star
Trek (old and new). This is the first Hugo in 43 years to go to a
science fiction TV series other than TZ or ST.

Where will you display the Hugo?
I was thinking of putting the Hugo on display in my bedroom,
but I decided it was 'way too Freudian.

Have you taken it onto the set?
Absolutely, I took the Hugo out on the very next day, Tuesday. The
whole place was very excited about it.

B5 received another award at WorldCon.
Yeah, the Shadow Hugo (an ominous name for what's basically a
coaster-shaped circuit board with a bronze plate on it) went to B5 from
Sci-Fi.Com, which was actually the first SF award B5 has gotten, beating
the real Hugos by about 24 hours.

The reason they had to come out of the SFFWA (Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America) suite to give me the award
had to do with my feelings toward SFFWA, from which I resigned over
their attitude toward media writers and the dramatic nebula (bottom
line: all media writers are hacks, and it's not real writing, and even
though media work, scripts, are eligible for membership, or were then,
they're not eligible for the Nebula because it isn't really writing).

Actually, what I said to the folks from scifi.com was..."I wouldn't go
in there for the presentation if I were dying of lung cancer and they
were offering free chemotherapy at the door." Nothing against many of
the SFFWA members, many of them are fine folks who're taking the rap
for a provincially minded leadership, but after the grief I got from
SFWA over all this before, the hate mail, the vindictiveness, the
resignation (to this day they still haven't had the guts to print my
letter of resignation in the Journal), I just couldn't go in there for
the award.

...sigh...I'm gonna regret this, I know it, I just
know it....

C'mere. Siddown. Lemme 'splain.

I resigned SFWA (back before it became SFFWA) for the reasons you
cite, and over the whole Dramatic Nebula issue, which was for me the
defining moment and the proverbial straw across the equally
proverbial camel's back.

A number of us -- me, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, Mike Cassutt,
Harlan, others -- attempted to get SFWA to restore the Dramatic
Nebula, which had been dropped for a number of years. In the course
of this, I received more abusive, vitriolic, hateful pieces of mail
and email than I can begin to describe to you. It rivals or exceeds
*anything* ever sent to me in any flame war. All from other SFWA
members. One quote I remember vividly is emblematic of the whole: "I
work my ass off writing for pennies a word, while all you hacks in TV
churn out crap for thousands of dollars a page. You and your LA
buddies will never get a Dramatic Nebula as long as I'm alive."

And that was the nicest letter I got.

It was explained to me, in mail, email and the SFWA journal, that
scriptwriting wsan't really *writing*, it was just typing. That TV
writers weren't really writers. That you can't read a script unless
you're trained, so you can't vote on it. That since TV/film is often
a collaborative form, you don't know who contributed what, so how can
you give a nebula? And there's George Martin's argument, that SFWA
should give Dramatic Nebulas to scriptwriters when WGA allows prose
writers to join.

And the responses to this...it *is* writing, you *can* read the
script easily, it's just the margins that are different. Editors
often contribute structure and ideas and other material to the books
they edit, but I don't see that stopping regular nebulas. And SFWA
was built around a particular *genre*, anything in that genre is or
should be acceptable; WGA is built around *form*, the script, and any
genre within that form is acceptable. We're talking apples and
oranges here.

I was even willing to remove myself from all future DN consideration
to remove the notion that I was doing this to get one myself. It was
the principle, for one vital reason:

At that time, SFWA allowed scripts to qualify you for membership in
SFWA. Scripts were fine as far as SFWA was concerned as long as it
brought in more in the way of membership dues. If it brought money
INTO SFWA, then it was writing, and qualified script writers to join
SFWA. But when it came time to give out the dramatic nebula...nope,
suddenly it ain't writing no more.

It was a clear contradiction, and a bald-faced double-standard.
Hypocrisy at its most blatant.

So finally, when the move to restore the Dramatic Nebula was vetoed,
I quit. The final irony being this: over the 10 years or so I'd been
a member, I'd written maybe 7 or 8 letters to be published in the
SFWA Journal, which appears quarterly or monthly, I forget now.
There were (and are) people who had something in almost every issue,
often for pages at a time. I sent my letter of resignation to the
Journal, and it has never to this day been printed. Because once it
became clear that I was no longer going to continue paying dues
(though I was still a member at the time of the letter, and for
several months thereafter, until my prior payment ran out), they
really had no interest in hearing anything from a scriptwriter. They
later tried the exuse that it was too long, but it was exactly the
same length as the majority of letters that appeared in the Journal.

In fighting for the rights of script-members of SFWA on the DN
issue, and the perception of scriptwriters in general, I was
insulted, abused, targeted, slandered, ridiculed, threatened and
harrassed. While there are many fine individuals who belong to the
group, as an organization is is provincial and small minded and
insecure and jealous. Any John Norman GOR novel would theoretically
be eligible for a Nebula, but 12 Monkeys would not. If an SF novel
sells 35,000 copies, it's a great thing; 100,000 is a *terrific*
thing, much ballyhooed by the SF establishment. B5 has a hardcore
audience of between 10 and 15 *million* people.

So bottom-line...yeah, I left SFWA because I got tired of the
contempt the organization and many of its members held (and still
hold) for scriptwriters. When it came time to accept the Science
Fiction Weekly's award for "The Coming of Shadows," I stepped into
the SFFWA suite (where they were to be given out) just long enough to
find the guys involved, and get out again. And the award was
presented out in the hallway, because I didn't want it to happen
there. As I told the organizer, I wouldn't go into the SFFWA suite
for this if I were dying of lung cancer and they were offering free
chemotherapy at the door.

The promo for the Hugo-commemorative rerun had a
"Winner 1996 Hugo Award" overlay. Was it hard to get WB to do
that?
It was their idea. They're impressed that we got the Hugo.